Fell and Falling
by GoggleBox
Summary: Castiel has seen his family fall. Now he hates the rain. Castiel angst, containing minor s8 finale allusions.


Castiel couldn't stand the idea of sitting and waiting in Dean's room for him to awaken, so he rose and walked to the lobby of the hotel. The knowledge of the indescribable pain that had come to his family shook him until his mind was scattered throughout his body. Sitting in a room where others were staying but no one could listen would not do anything to soothe him. It had never helped him.

His shoes clacked piercingly though the corridor. He could hear people rustling and breathing in their rooms. He could hear the sounds of the world around him, but couldn't see a thing. He hated that, too.

The eyes of the weary man sat heavily on the lower half of his vision, fixed in position and allowing the tiles to filter continuously through his eyes: gray, white, gray. It was reliable and predictable.

He reached the lobby with a weary finality rather than a triumphant one. Two chairs faced each other across from the fireplace, the room's main centerpiece. He could walk outside through the doors to his left, or turn right to the chairs. The walk through the halls had frayed his nerves; he needed something else to focus on. As tempting as it was to just keep walking away, he needed to sit.

When he came closer, he found a woman already occupying the seat facing opposite him. She was brunette, her hair worked back into a sloppy braid. She sat with her legs on the seat, her knees lying one way and her feet the other. When he passed her, she looked up, her gaze pleading but curious. He nodded and sank into the opposite seat. She looked familiar, not in her face, but in her spirit.

Suddenly, a roar appeared over the strangers' heads. Castiel and his looked out the window, fixated, as the landscape was pummeled and punched. The window began to distort, and the window rang with the sound of rain, the largest drops Castiel had lived to witness. The woman leaned forward. Each spatter looked like an entire egg had been hurled at the panes. She stood and began walking toward the window, but seemed to decide halfway there that she couldn't wait to get closer. Castiel saw her place a hand on a pane. She breathed shakily but deeply, almost darkly enamored with the phenomena existing outside. She gave a last breath and rested her head on the window just above her trembling fingertips. Castiel tried to count the seconds of pattering, but always found himself counting the taps of rain on the window. When she finally turned, her cheeks were reddened and her eyes were even more downcast. Her breath left a cloud outlining her hand on the window pane, like a shadow surrounded by mist. She held her frame until she reached her chair. She placed a hand on its arm and tumbled into the seat, shrinking into the cushions like a very scared child. "The last of them," she spoke, her voice rattling like the noise around them. "The last of us."

Castiel put his head in his hands and shook. He couldn't tell which emotion drove him to do so: fear or sadness. He saw his childhood, his brothers laughing. He saw his garrison, organized and predictable. He remembered it all. He shook in his hands, the only hands he knew he could never trust, but the only ones he knew that could hold him up like this. He wiped his face and leaned on his elbows with his hands clasped. If only there were someone he could pray to. He opened his mouth. He closed it. She knew. Every inhabitant of the hotel knew. He knew that the others were there, looking out of their windows and almost certainly thinking the exact same thing. If only their flight on featherless skeletons had been excused as beautiful and healing, as this rain was. But even angels were cursed with their own perils, the very messengers of God faced with an unconditional fate. Only Grace could rain down. Angels could only fall. Cas looked to his company and found himself sharing a gaze between them. It was one of worry and uncertainty, the kind that siblings nestle into when parents argue. She looked back to the window, and Cas looked into the fire.

And then they sat, alone in their thoughts once more.


End file.
